


the somnambulist

by stylusmaleficarum (cygnes)



Category: Silicon Valley (TV)
Genre: Dissociation, Dubious Consent, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-06
Updated: 2018-05-06
Packaged: 2019-05-03 06:48:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 844
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14563350
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cygnes/pseuds/stylusmaleficarum
Summary: Not all of Jared's connection to Gavin is severed when he leaves Hooli.





	the somnambulist

**Author's Note:**

  * For [crucialandinert](https://archiveofourown.org/users/crucialandinert/gifts).



> Originally posted [here](https://stylusmaleficarum.tumblr.com/post/173112298697/the-somnambulist) on tumblr. Set at some nebulous point during season 1.

In theory, it’s over.

In theory, it’s been over for a long time now.

In practice, it’s something that keeps happening. A recurring dream. Sleepwalking. Yes, that’s it: it’s very much like sleepwalking. Jared wakes up in unfamiliar places, disoriented, and has to trace back uneven threads of memory to figure out how he got there.

Afterward, it often seems to have happened to someone else. Surely not to Jared, or even to Donald, who was a juvenile form of the same organism. Male red-winged blackbirds have more yellow in their markings that diminishes as they age. Some amateur birders will mistakenly identify the same bird in different stages of its life as a ‘yellow-winged blackbird’ (incorrect; they live only in South America) and later a red-winged blackbird. Donald was an immature form, too-yellow. Hardly recognizable as the same person. The bones are the same, though.

There’s a chance — a significant chance, at that — that some part of Jared still relies on Gavin. Not in a literal sense. Gavin is not his boss anymore, Gavin has no control over the day-to-day workings of his life.

Though, no: that’s not right. Gavin has no _tangible_ control over the day-to-day workings of Jared’s life. He’s not there to see what Jared wears or what he eats. And yet he finds himself running along that track, worn smooth by long use ( _you’re coming home with me tomorrow night, I want to see you in blue and gray for the meeting with Andras Financial_ ) or else consciously running counter to it, vindictive ( _what have I told you about that fucking Patagonia vest, Christ, you’re not a coder so you’d better stop dressing like one_ ). There is enough of Gavin rattling around his head now, cold echoes, to make up for the physical absence.

The absence, except when Jared sleepwalks.

It seems to happen organically, which speaks to the truth of an intricate underlying choreography. They do not merely happen to be in the same place at the same time; Gavin would not subject himself to unflattering fluorescent lighting outside of work hours without a purpose. But it seems that way. So that Jared doesn’t have time to question it as he drives to a rendezvous, maybe. So that he doesn’t have the time to wake up from his night-wandering.

(Night-wandering. Nachtwandeln. Why did that come to mind? Where did he learn it?)

Gavin is kinder when he’s angry but certain that he has the upper hand. Kind, and sharp. It’s frightening in a way that careless roughness never is. And Gavin has been very kind in most of the time since Jared left Hooli.

“I’m not going to tell you anything compromising,” Jared says. Or Jared’s dream-self says, the doppelgänger who is Jared from moment to moment but someone else when he will think back on the incident later.

“No,” Gavin says, and smiles. He can be charming when it suits him. “You’re a zealot and you’ve found your cause. You belong to Pied Piper for as long as there _is_ a Pied Piper.” He cups Jared’s face in one hand, rubbing his thumb over Jared’s cheekbone. Jared leans into it without thinking. Without consciously thinking. He’s asleep, or underwater somewhere. Down deep.

“Yes,” Jared says. “So I don’t understand what you’re getting out of this.” His mind and soul are at Pied Piper’s disposal now. All Gavin has to work with is his body. A body worked-over by enough trials, enough rough treatment, that it can’t possibly be the end goal. Gavin could have a better body at his disposal with no effort at all, bought or borrowed or freely given.

“What I’m getting out of this?” Gavin repeats. He laughs. His hand moves down to stroke the side of Jared’s neck. A proprietary gesture, like petting a cat. “I’m getting the satisfaction of playing a long game.” Jared waits. Gavin likes the sound of his voice. He’ll explain without being asked, given enough time. “Pied Piper isn’t built to last. That dipshit Hendricks and his company are going to go under. It’ll break your heart. And you’ll come to me, won’t you?”

Jared swallows. Gavin applies no pressure to his neck, doesn’t move to take him by the throat, as he sometimes has before. In less kind, less frightening encounters.

“Because I’ll be all you have left. You’ll learn a lesson. You’ll beg me to take you back. I’ll make you work for it, but I will. And you’ll know better than to leave again.”

Jared wakes up in one of Gavin’s guest bedrooms. He might have been in this one before, or not. It has floor-to-ceiling windows looking out on a rock garden. Minimalist: moss on stones, a Japanese maple meticulously groomed to smallness. A stranger is waiting to drive him home in a nondescript black sedan.

Home, which is not a neat and white-walled condo furnished tastefully and economically in Swedish pine, but rather a chaotic house full of brilliant, frustrating people. Everything mismatched, but beautiful. Magical.

Or maybe that part is the dream.


End file.
